In full flight: Amy Tan’s “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” takes wing

By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Photo by Kim Newmoney

Amy Tan might not have been the first Asian American author writing in the United States, yet she sure feels like the first for a lot of people. 

“In the old days, it was just me and Maxine Hong Kingston,” Tan recalled to the Asian Weekly. The celebrated author will be in Seattle on Wednesday to talk about her latest endeavor: a bird watching journal called “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” released in April 2024. There are many more successful Asian American writers in the U.S. today than there were when Tan started out, and surely Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” was a turning point.

Traveling to support “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” wasn’t Tan’s idea. She avoids book tours. “It’s not real life,” she said. She also doesn’t pay attention to mentions of herself in the media. “I try to stay grounded…I don’t keep any clippings. I don’t watch interviews.” She made a decision early on to “not be sucked into this; to stay real” because “all this attention is not making you a better person,” and for her, is not the measure of a person. 

This tour is a little different. 

“It’s fun talking about birds,” Tan acknowledged. Her editor knew she had compiled a collection of journal entries and artwork related to bird watching, and suggested she publish it. “I thought it was a harebrained idea,” Tan admitted. She thought the journal was “a mess.” In fact, “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” has been selling out left and right. 

“It went to number one the first week it debuted, and now even without stock…it’s number two,” Tan said in amazement, somehow not aware of her own popularity. 

And then there’s birds. “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” is described online as “a gorgeous, witty account of birding, nature, and the beauty around us that hides in plain sight.” According to Tan, that’s because in 2016, around the time of the presidential election, she was “seeing the ugliness in plain sight…I felt despair and I needed to find beauty again in the world, that other aspect of the world that was good, so I went to do nature journaling and to draw.” In particular birds. Her own backyard is still her favorite place, though she has expanded her bird watching both nationally and internationally, and is now a board member of the American Bird Conservatory. 

Amy Tan and one of the “backyard birds.” (Photo by Enmei Tan)

Tan prefers to use the phrase “bird watching” versus “birding,” the latter which can be misconstrued and is too competitive. 

“A lot of people think they know 900 special breeds of birds, they know what they look like, and they check it off the list.” To her, that’s not the fun kind of birding, although “I do go with people like that. They are incredibly skilled at it.” Tan, though, doesn’t “keep a life list,” yet she does take advantage of opportunities to visit diverse spots known for birds. 

“I go to Central Park with expert birders. I recently was in Ecuador and Panama to go birding.” The day after her conversation with the Asian Weekly, she had plans to go with the Santa Barbara Audubon Society. “I do that kind of birding,” she said.

In 2016, “paralyzed” by events, and unable to write a novel she was working on, Tan turned to the birds in her backyard. The ugliness Tan saw surrounding the election included hate against Asians, some of it directed at herself. 

“It was dehumanizing and it was shocking,” she told the Asian Weekly. “I started getting rudeness.” She wasn’t sure—was race the reason people were being rude? “They’re not being rude to anyone else around me,” she would notice, on occasions such as on an airplane, when everyone was served except for her, and then finally, she was served grudgingly. Whether or not these types of encounters were racist, and in a way more obvious than Tan could remember prior to the election, it was just as relevant that “what happens is that your mind goes to that as a possibility and it’s ugly. That may not have been racism and then suddenly, you think everything around you that’s rude or weird might be based on racism.” Either way, it’s poison.

Turning to Nature was the right idea. 

“Immediately it took my mind to a different place,” Tan shared. “It was overpowering, in a very good way. It put me on a different path to not think about [the ugliness]. I look back and realize that in looking at birds, it became so much about how beautiful differences are as opposed to this hatred of differences.” 

In fact, Tan will judge you based on how you treat a bird. 

“It’s a good litmus test for how people view themselves in the whole scheme of humanity,” she said, and explained how every now and then on social media, someone will post that they have found an injured bird. “What is this?” the person will ask. “A lot of people will ID the bird, and say, ‘It’s not native, you can go ahead and kill it.’” This disregard for a living creature “seizes my heart” and Tan can’t help comparing it to how some people view immigrants. 

“My parents were illegal for the first 10 years. They were always in danger. There is this attitude people have towards immigrants: ‘Get rid of it. They don’t belong here.’ It’s completely without sympathy…I do judge character that way.”

“The Backyard Bird Chronicles” includes Tan’s journal entries, as well as drawings of the birds by Tan herself. Tan, who lives in California, took a drawing class to hone her skill. When asked about her favorite bird or type of bird, she will tell you about the owls on her own property, and her answer, too, will reveal how closely she has been paying attention to them. “We had two Great Horned Owls.” One was a young owl that “his mother was teaching him to hunt…He remained until the big rains came and I didn’t see him—they can’t fly when it’s raining—then he came back later with a mate…but then they left and they were going to nest. I’m always hoping she will bring back their young and they will teach them how to hunt in our yard.”

These birds and more can be found within “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” which Tan will be discussing at the Seattle Public Library – Central Library on May 29. The event is sold out.

Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.